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Serife (Sherry) Wong

@serife.bsky.social

3.1K followers 1.9K following 460 posts

Artist working on critical AI, power, and belief @ IcarusSalon.com & ArtificialLifeCoach.com Gray Area | Tech Inquiry | ORCAA | Kidd Lab UC Berkeley Loyal to the Land & the Brass Tax -- #Turkish #Kanaka

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Serife (Sherry) Wong @serife.bsky.social · 29d

Tech Inquiry techinquiry.org makes corporate influence more visible through tracking tech and surveillance contracts 💗 FOIA +🧾💗 We don't take billionaire $ and have server costs. Support this work via our fiscal sponsor, select Tech Inquiry in the drop down thesignalsnetwork.org/donate/ Thank you!

Donate to Support Whistleblowers and Media Investigations

Your donation is an investment in supporting the whistleblowers and journalists who uncover truth and help hold power accountable.

thesignalsnetwork.org

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Serife (Sherry) Wong @serife.bsky.social · 12h

Symposium between theory and art "The theoretical and the poetic—targeted forces that can forge alliances" & "A life in transition is—similar to literary and theoretical genres—characterized by mobility, change, and restlessness." www.mumok.at/en/calendar/...

Symposium | trans*poetics | mumok

www.mumok.at

Serife (Sherry) Wong @serife.bsky.social · 19h

this is hilarious. that interviewer backtracking "wait wait I didn't finish or..."

Juno Rylee Schultz @junoryleejournalism.com · 2d

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems...
SIMON: What?
SHAPIRO: ...Or saying...
SIMON: You imagine that?
SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over.
SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level.
SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this.
SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.

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Reposted by Serife (Sherry) Wong

Scott Rose @rprose.bsky.social · 1d

SoftBank, once best known for having lots of money, is seeking a $5b margin loan (on ARM shares!) to invest in OpenAI

A generational all-in bet on AI infrastructure and we are nearing the finance equivalent of turning over couch cushions to find cash to pay for it
www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

SoftBank in Talks for $5 Billion Margin Loan Backed by Arm Stock

SoftBank Group Corp. is in talks to borrow $5 billion from global banks, refilling its coffers at a time Masayoshi Son is accelerating the Japanese investment firm’s bets on artificial intelligence.

www.bloomberg.com

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Reposted by Serife (Sherry) Wong

Tech Policy Press @techpolicypress.bsky.social · 4d

While there is value to foresight and anticipating risks, writes Tech Policy Press fellow
@eryk.bsky.social, could the language used by AI risk communities to describe the technology contribute to the very problems it aims to curb?

The AI Safety Debate Needs AI Skeptics | TechPolicy.Press

The language used by AI risk communities to describe the technology may contribute to the very problems it aims to curb, Eryk Salvaggio writes.

www.techpolicy.press

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Reposted by Serife (Sherry) Wong

Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 3d

"It wanted to signal strength. Instead, it’s revealing its weakness. The administration’s need to break the academy is forcing it to make a desperately risky gamble." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/o...

Opinion | You Beat Trumpism by Banding Together. It’s as Hard and as Simple as That.

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Serife (Sherry) Wong

Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 2d

very interesting what is not allowed these days. in this case, basic archiving of real videos

www.404media.co/apple-banned...

Apple Banned an App That Simply Archived Videos of ICE Abuses

Eyes Up's purpose is to "preserve evidence until it can be used in court." But it has been swept up in Apple's crackdown on ICE-spotting apps.

www.404media.co

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Serife (Sherry) Wong @serife.bsky.social · 2d

Politico @politico.com · 4d

Killer robots, AI-induced psychosis and accidental nuclear war: Inside the Pentagon’s race to deploy artificial intelligence — and avoid disaster.

‘Swarms of Killer Robots’: Why AI is Terrifying the American Military

A Q&A with a former Pentagon insider on the AI debates that could shape the future of national security.

www.politico.com

Serife (Sherry) Wong @serife.bsky.social · 2d

Public social media posts meets "
"LexisNexis Accurint and Thomson Reuters CLEAR, which knit together property records, phone bills, utilities, vehicle registrations, and other personal details into searchable files"
Https://www.wired.com/story/ice-socia-media-surveillance-24-7-contract/

ICE Wants to Build Out a 24/7 Social Media Surveillance Team

Documents show that ICE plans to hire dozens of contractors to scan X, Facebook, TikTok, and other platforms to target people for deportation.

www.wired.com

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Reposted by Serife (Sherry) Wong

Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 2d

It's clear most Trump supporters have no idea the videos are fake.

Fake Protest Videos Are the Latest AI Slop to Go Viral in MAGA World

Trump supporters are doubling down on AI sadism.

gizmodo.com

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Reposted by Serife (Sherry) Wong

Alex Hanna-ween @alexhanna.bsky.social · 3d

I'm not an economist but seems worrying that the whole US economy is seven companies in a trenchcoat, passing the same $20 up and down

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 3d

NVIDIA and OpenAi:

Concerns that their “increasingly complex and interconnected web of business transactions is artificially propping up the trillion-dollar AI boom.“

@bloomberg.com $NVDA 👀
www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

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Serife (Sherry) Wong @serife.bsky.social · 3d

Georgio OKeefe's estate is going to be pissed.

Serife (Sherry) Wong @serife.bsky.social · 3d

This database documents individuals in internment camps in Xinxiang, & they are running low on funds. They need $3000. I vouch for their work and they need very little. Please help! The records of over 90,000 victims must be maintained, it is evidence and hope. www.gofundme.com/f/xinjiang-v...

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Serife (Sherry) Wong @serife.bsky.social · 3d

Blake Lemoine was the first famous case of this kind of belief formation with LLMs. His writings often have a similar spiritual conversations. Spirituality + AI creates a distinct connection that pushes anthropomorphism of tools into a dangerous space. cajundiscordian.medium.com/is-lamda-sen...

Is LaMDA Sentient? — an Interview

What follows is the “interview” I and a collaborator at Google conducted with LaMDA. It is incomplete as the GMail word limit cut off the…

cajundiscordian.medium.com

Serife (Sherry) Wong @serife.bsky.social · 3d

People can receive spiritual insights from many places, nature, doing nothing, or from things, including computers; but language models are not neutral or safe as receiving insight from looking at rocks on the beach. Models are extractive, untested, and have caused psychological harm already.

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Serife (Sherry) Wong @serife.bsky.social · 3d

And one of the reasons why my project www.artificiallifecoach.com is called Artificial Life Coach was in anticipation of AI life coaching blowing up and the hope that when people googled for these they could get the message: Believe in Yourself. Not Big Tech.

Artificial Life Coach

Believe in yourself. Not big tech. GET STARTED Curious about AI? Let Astrology Be Your Guide HOROSCOPES Your astrological sign is the day you were launched into the world! ...

www.artificiallifecoach.com

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Serife (Sherry) Wong @serife.bsky.social · 3d

Many of their bots invite you to speak to compassionate AI or learn from Ram Dass. People who follow spiritual leaders have trust their leaders immensely, It's a betrayal of this trust to accumulate personal spiritual and health data that gets siphoned up by the big tech companies & data brokers.

Serife (Sherry) Wong @serife.bsky.social · 3d

His poorly informed thinking on these tools is evident in his book digital dharma that came out last year where he situates himself as the go-to-advisor for how tools like ChatGPT can be used to bring AI into your "innerworld" encouraging sharing ones private health information with companies

Serife (Sherry) Wong @serife.bsky.social · 3d

These spiritual leaders may not be aware of these kinds of issues with Chatbots and if they are may be reluctant to pull back on product launches especially when invested in their success like Deepak Chopra via his startup for creating AI twins of other gurus.

Serife (Sherry) Wong @serife.bsky.social · 3d

A quick skim of the comments on the ads shows evidence of an overlap between vulnerable people and spiritual seekers. Many already have some un-moored from reality ideas on language models as gods, aliens or portals as we have seen in articles on AI psychosis.

Serife (Sherry) Wong @serife.bsky.social · 3d

Like other sectors, spirituality embraced AI chat bots to meditate interactions w followers. The leaders are of two camps: people who are hustling new profits and true believers trying to help more people. Both camps lack AI education and are inadvertently harming their communities & the planet.

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Serife (Sherry) Wong @serife.bsky.social · 3d

The discourse around shock value Sora content is very similar to the reddit discourse when stable diffusion was released without any guardrails. Companies learned nothing happens even if people care & grew bolder w releasing gen AI. Why did OpenAI choose to allow for shock value content & IP issues?

J. Nathan Matias @natematias.bsky.social · 3d

Genuine question - what are OpenAI’s Sora and other video generation tools good for?

I am honestly trying to understand what is so important that it’s worth the cost. If you have examples, I would be interested to hear them.

futurism.com/artificial-i...

People Are Making Sora 2 Videos of Stephen Hawking Being Horribly Brutalized

People are using OpenAI's Sora 2 to generate videos of theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking being brutalized in ghoulish ways.

futurism.com

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Reposted by Serife (Sherry) Wong

The Nation Magazine @thenation.com · 4d

With platforms like Boston University’s “TerrierGPT,” the pressure for students to use AI is now coming from colleges themselves, even as researchers warn of the long-term consequences, writes Julie Huynh.

What Happens When Universities Offer a “Critical Embrace” of AI?

With platforms like Boston University’s “TerrierGPT,” the pressure for students to use AI is coming from colleges themselves, even as researchers warn of long-term consequences.

www.thenation.com

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Serife (Sherry) Wong @serife.bsky.social · 4d

Match group owns tinder, match, okcupid etc the CEO is a board member of palantir.... Which I learned from an Instagram influencer. Critical tech education has spread out so much in the past year.

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Reposted by Serife (Sherry) Wong

Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 8d

In two weeks!

rifkindcenter.org/rifkind-cent...

A poster for an event at T
HE RIFKIND CENTER
The City College of New York
Title: Stripmining History: How the 'Al' Industry Extracts the Past & What Scholars in the Humanities Can Do to Stop It"
IN-PERSON & VIA ZOOM
OCTOBER 16 | 5:00PM - 6:30PM | NAC 6/316

Sonja Drimmer, Associate Professor, UMass Amherst

more details in the link in the post

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Reposted by Serife (Sherry) Wong

Kathleen Romig @kathleenromig.bsky.social · 4d

Reportedly DOGE is working on a “data lake” that uses sensitive data from IRS & SSA “to track and surveil undocumented immigrants.”

www.wired.com/story/doge-c...

DOGE Is Building a Master Database to Surveil and Track Immigrants

DOGE is knitting together data from the Department of Homeland Security, Social Security Administration, an IRS that could create a surveillance tool of unprecedented scope.

www.wired.com

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